Over this past week the
worsening situation in West Africa, including Mali, caused by the locust
swarms that annihilate the harvest has been a heavy burden on my heart. People
lose all they have and are in danger of starvation - one million people
across West Africa are concerned.

And the worst is yet to
come in a few weeks, when the next generation of locusts swarm out. Please
pray that the damage would be minimal. And I'm also asking the Lord what I
could do. I feel compelled to go help those who have lost everything and who
have nothing to eat, by providing food as well as sharing the good news.

May our Lord and King be
glorified through this situation, and may His kingdom spread in Mali!

In His service,

Claudia

August
9

The plague of locusts
sweeping south across the Sahara desert is now causing serious crop damage in
Mauritania, Mali and Niger and has spread for the first time to Chad,
agricultural experts and government officials said on Monday.

Over the weekend, swarms
of locusts invaded eastern Mali and started devouring crops, an agricultural
official in the central town of Mopti said.

"What I saw
yesterday evening around 8 p.m. around Douentza on the way to Gao, was
worrying : about four hectares of land was covered with locusts," Cheick
Sidiya Diaby, the government's regional director of agriculture in Mopti,
told IRIN by telephone.

"Until then, the
swarms, which consisted of 600 000 to 700 000 insects per hectare, had mainly
been eating trees and grass, but now they have started eating crops too. If
nothing is done, the consequences on people and their livestock will be
incalculable," he added.

[snip]

However, despite the
intensity of the invasion, all the Sahelian countries are suffering a chronic
shortage of insecticide and spraying equipment and vehicles with which to
spray the locusts and prevent them from breeding.

Mali has so far raised
only one third of the US$3 million requested from donors to step up locust
control measures.

"To date, we have
been invaded by 63 swarms, but we only have a third of the resources we need
to treat the area of nearly 650,000 hectares that is currently
infested", Brahima Koni, the deputy coordinator of Mali's locust control
campaign, told IRIN by telephone from Bamako.

So far, he added, Mali
only has 18 spray teams deployed on the ground.

[snip]

Meanwhile, local people
in the affected countries have resorted to fighting the insect invasion with
their bare hands.

In Mali, villagers have
formed groups of up to 50 people who gather whenever they see locusts
descending on their crops, and try to chase them away with sticks.

When the insects
descended on Nouakchott last week, city residents tried in vain to burn
rubbish, tyres and dead leaves to create smoke that would drive them away.

In many countries,
villagers simply dig holes that they hope recently hatched flightless locusts
known as hoppers will fall into. They then burn or drown them.

But locust experts warned
that the worst is still to come. "In the weeks to come, there will be
many more locusts than those that have arrived so far", Annie Monnard,
an FAO locust specialist told IRIN from Rome.

August 19

The UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned that unless a new generation of
immature insects developing in the semi-desert of southern Mauritania is
sprayed quickly with insecticide, a new generation of mature locusts will
take to the skies in the coming weeks and wreak even greater damage on crops
throughout the Sahel.

"If we do not
succeed in controlling the plague in Mauritania, we will have new swarms
taking off for Senegal, Mali, Niger, Chad and beyond there towards
Sudan," FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told reporters in Dakar on
Wednesday night following a two-day trip to Mauritania and Senegal.

Diouf said he estimated
the cost of controlling the locust invasion had gone up to US$100 million
from $9 million in February when the FAO first appealed for international aid
to deal with the threat of a new plague across West Africa.

But he warned that unless
the international community reacted quickly, several countries could face
famine and the final cost would be much higher.

"If we delay, we
will be faced with the situation we experienced 15 years ago when $600
million had to be devoted to the fight against locusts over a period of five
years," Diouf said.

[snip]

Agricultural experts say
the situation is particularly critical in the semi-arid countries of the
Sahel since the rainy season has created favourable conditions for locust
breeding and a new generation of the insects is likely to descend on food
crops there next month just as they are ripening for the annual harvest.

FAO said locust control
teams in Mauritania managed to treat just over 6,000 hectares of infected
land during the first 10 days of August. However, the government has said it
needs to spray up to one million hectares to bring the insects under control.

[snip]

Localised damage to crops
has also been reported in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ask of Me, and I will make the nations your inheritance. (Ps 2:8)